Why Pentagon bloat will kill real deficit cutting

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:01:00 +0000

Touted as the "supercommittee" by pundits, the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee -- created by the Aug. 2 debt deal between President Barack Obama and the congressional Republicans -- has turned out to be not so super. The real super-committees of Congress, the appropriations committees, are reasserting their control, and they are doing it with the defense budget, keeping it quite flush with money and unraveling a second round of debt reduction.

Painful as it is to remember, the August debt deal -- which got the country past the crisis provoked by the Republicans' refusal to allow an increase in the debt ceiling -- requires the supercommittee to find at least $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over the next 10 years. If the 12 congressional Republicans and Democrats on the committee fail to agree on those cuts, automatic reductions are supposed to take place, including $492 billion in the defense budget and over $400 billion elsewhere, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Politically, the idea was to apply pressure by threatening the unthinkable, i.e., "We'll shoot the hostage." Either the supercommittee will cut a deal, or the defense budget gets whacked.

Salon.com > Winslow T. Wheeler

Why Pentagon bloat will kill real deficit cutting